The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 eBook

III. Thou once didst leave Almighty Jove,
And all the Golden
Roofs above:
The Carr thy wanton
Sparrows drew;
Hovring in Air
they lightly flew,
As to my Bower
they wing’d their Way:
I saw their quivring
Pinions play.

IV. The Birds dismist (while you remain)
Bore back their
empty Carr again:
Then You, with
Looks divinely mild,
In evry heavnly
Feature smil’d,
And ask’d
what new Complaints I made,
And why I call’d
you to my Aid?

V. What Phrenzy in my Bosom rag’d,
And by what Care
to be asswag’d?
What gentle Youth
I could allure,
Whom in my artful
Toiles secure?
Who does thy tender
Heart subdue,
Tell me, my
Sappho, tell me Who?

VI. Tho now he Shuns thy longing Arms,
He soon shall
court thy slighted Charms;
Tho now thy Offrings
he despise,
He soon to thee
shall Sacrifice;
Tho now he freeze,
he soon shall burn,
And be thy Victim
in his turn.

Madam Dacier observes, there is something very
pretty in that Circumstance of this Ode, wherein Venus
is described as sending away her Chariot upon her
Arrival at Sappho’s Lodgings, to denote
that it was not a short transient Visit which she
intended to make her. This Ode was preserved
by an eminent Greek Critick, [3] who inserted
it intire in his Works, as a Pattern of Perfection
in the Structure of it.

Longinus has quoted another Ode of this great
Poetess, which is likewise admirable in its Kind,
and has been translated by the same Hand with the
foregoing one. I shall oblige my Reader with it
in another Paper. In the mean while, I cannot
but wonder, that these two finished Pieces have never
been attempted before by any of our Countrymen.
But the Truth of it is, the Compositions of the Ancients,
which have not in them any of those unnatural Witticisms
that are the Delight of ordinary Readers, are extremely
difficult to render into another Tongue, so as the
Beauties of the Original may not appear weak and faded
in the Translation.

C.

[Footnote 1: Leucas]

[Footnote 2: Ambrose Philips, whose Winter Piece
appeared in No. 12 of the Tatler, and whose
six Pastorals preceded those of Pope. Philips’s
Pastorals had appeared in 1709 in a sixth volume of
a Poetical Miscellany issued by Jacob Tonson.
The first four volumes of that Miscellany had been
edited by Dryden, the fifth was collected after Dryden’s
death, and the sixth was notable for opening with the